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Top court to decide: Should doctors be held to lay standard?
Copied from first part of article:
Maryland physicians could see established medical liability law upended if the state’s high court doesn’t reject a trial court’s instructions informing jurors that negligence could be defined by what a “reasonable” layperson would do.
For more than a century, negligence in Maryland medical malpractice cases has been guided by the “reasonably competent” physician standard of care—a standard that juries and judges learn through expert witness testimony.
But when a five-day trial in which a patient sued his neurosurgeon after developing an abscess and bacterial infection after an incision did not heal properly concluded, a Baltimore County Circuit Court judge instructed the jury that they could also consider what a layperson would consider reasonable. When the physician asked the court to have the standard of care measured solely based on the expectations for a neurosurgeon, the judge refused to modify the jury instructions in the case, Armacost v. Davis.
The result: The jury returned a verdict in favor of the patient plaintiff, Mark Armacost....
I don’t want to imagine the world where what we do has to be based not on what another peer would do, but a lay person. How could this even be possible?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Copied from first part of article:
Maryland physicians could see established medical liability law upended if the state’s high court doesn’t reject a trial court’s instructions informing jurors that negligence could be defined by what a “reasonable” layperson would do.
For more than a century, negligence in Maryland medical malpractice cases has been guided by the “reasonably competent” physician standard of care—a standard that juries and judges learn through expert witness testimony.
But when a five-day trial in which a patient sued his neurosurgeon after developing an abscess and bacterial infection after an incision did not heal properly concluded, a Baltimore County Circuit Court judge instructed the jury that they could also consider what a layperson would consider reasonable. When the physician asked the court to have the standard of care measured solely based on the expectations for a neurosurgeon, the judge refused to modify the jury instructions in the case, Armacost v. Davis.
The result: The jury returned a verdict in favor of the patient plaintiff, Mark Armacost....
I don’t want to imagine the world where what we do has to be based not on what another peer would do, but a lay person. How could this even be possible?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
